A problem with a voting machine, most likely human error, has caused a proposition at the Cattaraugus-Little Valley Central School District to be ruled invalid. The vote on Proposition No. 2, which asked voters to cast a ballot for the purchase of additional school buses, had been declared “passed” unofficially by the school district on May 15, the night of the votes. However, official results were not released for two days because school officials spotted an error. As previously reported, school officials ruled the proposition invalid when the official results were announced. “The night of the vote, when we tabulated everything, there were actually more votes cast for that proposition than there were voters who went in the door, signed the book and went into the machines,” said district superintendent Jon Peterson. “So we knew there was some error in the numbers.”
School officials released “unofficial” results that night to the media – an odd practice because other districts had all their numbers tabulated and released less than an hour after polls closed. Peterson said the reason for the delay was because of this error and clarified that all other propositions – the budget vote, the vote on community library funding and vote for school board members – were not affected. After officials realized the error the night of the voting, Peterson called a member of the Cattaraugus County Board of Elections to ask for advice. He was told to declare all propositions had unofficially passed but to refrain from releasing official results.